Next-Generation TV Experience – Built on a Strong Partnership
Quickline TV-Box 2
Following the success of the first Quickline TV-Box, Quickline has once again chosen TARA Systems as a trusted technology partner for its next-generation device. This decision underlines the strength of a long-standing collaboration that began in 2017 and continues to evolve with a shared vision; delivering premium TV experiences that users love.
Designed for Users: Familiar, Yet Enhanced
With the Quickline TV-Box 2, users benefit from an experience that feels instantly familiar, while offering meaningful improvements where it matters most.
The Quickline TV-Box has already received multiple awards in Switzerland for its outstanding TV experience, thus the existing concept has been carefully preserved, maintaining its intuitive and user-friendly design. At the same time, key innovations elevate the overall experience:
- Instant Live TV Access: Users now land directly in the Quickline TV experience instead of a generic Android home screen. Live TV is available immediately after startup.
- Faster Performance: Powered by the latest Amlogic chipset, the box starts into live TV in just seconds, even from deep standby.
- Energy Efficiency: With significantly reduced power consumption, the new box uses less than half the energy of its predecessor, just 0.5 W in standby and 2.5 W during operation.
- Enhanced Responsiveness: Improved system performance ensures smoother navigation, faster interactions, and a fluid user experience.
- Automatic Framerate Adaptation: The system dynamically adjusts output frame rates to match content sources, ensuring consistently smooth playback across live TV and streaming services.
This video (in German) shows how to install and set up the Quickline TV-Box 2 step by step.
Delivering a Seamless End-to-End TV Experience
At the core of the new TV-Box lies a powerful combination of platform capabilities and TARA Systems’ extensive expertise in media delivery and system integration. Built on Android TV 14 with a clear upgrade path through Android TV 18, the platform ensures long-term maintainability and future readiness.
The focus: ensuring a stable, high-quality, and consistent viewing experience across all scenarios, from live TV to personalized content. Our contributions include:
- Optimized Media Playback: Fine-tuned performance for live streaming (DASH), replay TV, and recordings ensures low latency, high stability, and fast response times.
- Advanced Monitoring Capabilities: Integrated monitoring functionality provides deep insights into playback behavior, enabling proactive quality assurance under varying network conditions.
- Ad Insertion Enablement: Client player supports dynamic, non-skippable commercial breaks delivered via server, with seamless, frame-accurate transitions back to the content.
- Complete TV Features: All essential TV features, such as subtitles and Teletext for streaming devices, are fully integrated and validated for Android TV 14.
- User Profiles & Personalization: Support for multiple user profiles allows individualized experiences, including personalized content and settings for different household members.
- Custom Launcher Integration: By supporting a tailored launcher aligned with Android TV Operator Tier requirements, the solution enables a branded, content-centric user experience with instant access to live TV.
- Seamless User Journey: Even in edge cases (e.g., temporary streaming interruptions), users retain access to apps and device functionality, ensuring reliability at all times.
- Backend Communication & Data Integration: Robust integration of backend services enables reliable handling of channel lists, EPG data, recordings management, and metadata, forming the foundation for a fully connected TV experience.
- Microservices for TV Backend: The backend services are built using a lightweight microservices architecture, ensuring flexibility and scalability for each implementation. We supported the implementation as an active development partner.
New features and UX interface in operation on the Quickline TV-Box 2. (Image source: Screenshots Quickline TV-Box 2)
Premium Hardware Meets Advanced Software
The Quickline TV-Box 2 is built on a powerful ecosystem of technology partners:
- Amlogic provides the high-performance chipset enabling speed and efficiency
- SDMC manufactures the device, based on a next-generation 4K platform
- Ruwido delivers a premium remote control designed for seamless interaction
Within this ecosystem, TARA Systems plays a central role in the software domain. Our responsibilities include media playback and system monitoring, ensuring a stable and high-performance TV experience. In the area of the launcher, TARA Systems supported the integration and alignment within the Android TV Operator Tier framework, while UI design and its implementation were carried out by Quickline.
Over the course of the collaboration, our involvement has continuously evolved beyond pure implementation, and we have taken on increasing responsibility in shaping the overall solution.
